Mandopop or Mandapop refers to Mandarin popular music. The genre has its origin in the jazz-influenced popular music of 1930s Shanghai known as Shidaiqu; later influences came from Japanese enka, Hong Kong's Cantopop, Taiwan's Hokkien pop, and in particular the Campus Song folk movement of the 1970s. 'Mandopop' may be used as a general term to describe popular songs performed in Mandarin. Though Mandopop predates Cantopop, the English term was coined around 1980 after "Cantopop" became a popular term for describing popular songs in Cantonese. "Mandopop" was used to describe Mandarin-language popular songs of that time, some of which were versions of Cantopop songs sung by the same singers with different lyrics to suit the different rhyme and tonal patterns of Mandarin.
Mandopop is categorized as a subgenre of commercial Chinese-language music within C-pop. Popular music sung in Mandarin was the first variety of popular music in Chinese to establish itself as a viable industry. It originated in Shanghai; later, Hong Kong, Taipei and Beijing also emerged as important centers of the Mandopop music industry. Among the regions and countries where Mandopop is most popular are mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.
History
Beginning of recording industry in China
The Chinese-language music industry began with the arrival of gramophone. The earliest gramophone recording in China was made in Shanghai in March 1903 by Fred Gaisberg, who was sent by the Victor Talking Machine Company (VTMC) in the U.S. to record local music in Asia. The recordings were then manufactured outside China and re-imported by the Gramophone Company's sales agent in China, the Moutrie (Moudeli) Foreign Firm. The Moudeli Company dominated the market before the 1910s until the Pathé Records () took over the leading role. Pathé was founded in 1908 by a Frenchman named Labansat who had previously started a novelty entertainment business using phonograph in Shanghai around the beginning of the 20th century. The company established a recording studio, and the first record-pressing plant in the Shanghai French Concession in 1914, and became the principal record company to serve as the backbone for the young industry in China. It originally recorded mainly Peking opera, but later expanded to Mandarin popular music. Later other foreign as well as Chinese-own recording companies were also established in China.
Early in the 20th century, people in China generally spoke in their own regional dialect. Although most people in Shanghai then spoke Shanghainese, the recordings of the pop music from Shanghai from the 1920s onwards were done in Standard Mandarin, which is based on the Beijing dialect. Mandarin was then considered as the language of the modern, educated class in China, and there was a movement to popularize the use of Mandarin as a national language in the pursuit of national unity. Those involved in this movement included songwriters such as Li Jinhui working in Shanghai. The drive to impose linguistic uniformity in China started in the early 20th century when the Qing Ministry of Education proclaimed Mandarin as the official speech to be taught in modern schools, a policy the new leaders of the Chinese Republic formed in 1912 were also committed to. Sound films in Shanghai which started in the early 1930s were made in Mandarin because of a ban on the use of dialects in films by the then Nanjing government, consequently popular songs from films were also performed in Mandarin.
1920s: Birth of Shidaiqu in Shanghai
Mandarin popular songs that started in the 1920s were called shidaiqu (時代曲 – meaning music of the time, thus popular music), and Shanghai was the center of its production. The Mandarin popular songs of the Shanghai era are considered by scholars to be the first kind of modern popular music developed in China, and the prototype of later Chinese pop song. Li Jinhui is generally regarded as the "Father of Chinese Popular Music" who established the genre in the 1920s. Buck Clayton, the American jazz musician, also worked alongside Li. Li established the Bright Moon Song and Dance Troupe, and amongst their singing stars were Wang Renmei and Li Lili. There was a close relationship between music and film industries and many of its singers also became actresses.